What the heck is even happening?

Ace, She/Her, Autistic, generally anxious.

[ivfhnyfubpx]

this scene is so fucking funny the english dub of this show is so good

[laughconfetti]

loud warning

[notajerusalemcricketd-deactivat]

[nunnatheinsanegerbil]

[teaboot]

Rolling on the floor sobbing and crying and losing my mind at “GET INSIDE THE VAAAAAAAAAAN”

[its-your-mind]

finally. an appropriate name for my ‘time to leave’ alarm.

[solarpunkfool]

What if we win?

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

How would you win?

[aetherograph]

And we've won a lot already, mind you.

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

We CAN fix it and we ARE fixing it and we DID fix it.

[three--rings]

Since 1990 extreme poverty has decreased worldwide by over HALF.

This is not the narrative media sells us. We have access to more information about suffering now than we used to, but things are getting BETTER overall. Yeah some people are trying to undo this, but we have made SO MUCH PROGRESS. Don't give up.

[littlebosslady7]

Laura and Travis duo Fireside Chat announced for next Tuesday - June 23rd at 7PM PST, only on Beacon. (src)

[tieflingkisser]

[lesbianslimefriend]

here's where to find it on windows 10

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

[marougus-the-dragon]

AI is a freacking plague, I share this for any windows user.

[utilitycaster]

What does Team Birdwatch have left?

CR Stats used to do this sort of thing back in the day, and so I thought I'd try to write up what this group hasn't used yet.

The big one: Teor and Julien have yet to level up. This will grant them higher proficiency bonuses and more HP. Teor will get notably more powerful with the ability to summon a steed, take two attacks per turn, and he will get three more spell slots (one first level, two second level) even if Brennan doesn't let him take another spell right away; plus, five more Lay on Hands. Julien will either get cunning action (helpful for moving quickly or disengaging) or an ASI/Feat (big wildcard there) and a third use of Second Wind. However, this hasn't happened yet. It's safe to assume that unless they die too quickly (and frankly, if they're just knocked unconscious? I'd use that as a level-up opportunity if I were Brennan; I think it will have to be insta-kill) they will level up, but it's not in play yet.

The unknown: I don't know Cyd's statblock abilities beyond the fact that he can attack and he has Divine Sense that has not yet been used. He has lost 3 strength, and is down a net 33 HP from max.

With that said here's what L5 Thimble and Occtis and L4 Julien and Teor still have left in the tank. Of note: Teor's strength has been reduced by 4 and Julien's by 2. Teor's is more of a consideration as that's his attack stat whereas Julien is a dex fighter, but see below.

Occtis: At 22/37 HP. He has cast presumably Tenser's Floating Disc (in that he used it to get Gaya over to the manor); Detect Magic; Summon Undead; and Life Transference. This means he has used both 3rd level spells and two 1st level spells. He has two more 1st levels and all three 2nd level spells. Gaya as a Putrid Spirit from Summon Undead is still up, immune to necrotic damage, at 28/30 HP, and Occtis can command her as a free action on his turn, though this is a concentration spell and will only last an hour. Also, if they are able to get a short rest (risky, but might be worth it) he has Arcane Recovery and Memorize Spell, the former of which can get him one of his third levels back and the latter of which lets him swap out a prepped spell with one from his spellbook. I don't think he's used Unsettling Presence either; and if they encounter any non-undead he does have Grim Harvest for himself.

Thimble: At 42/53 HP. She actually has all of her main abilities intact - HP and the fact that a single shadow attack has a 50% chance of insta-killing her is the main concern at this point. As a fairy, she has one casting of Faerie Fire, which she hasn't used, and, upon hitting level 5, a casting of Enlarge/Reduce, which I think she could cast on others, for which Teor is probably the best bet. She also just got Uncanny Dodge (which uses a reaction) and Cunning Strike, which uses a sneak attack die but can be used to poison or trip enemies. Chances are damage will be better in this combat, but it's an option. Her sneak attack also just went up.

Teor: At 34/43 HP. He has used one of two usages of Channel Divinity on a Divine Sense. He's used all of his current Lay on Hands on Cyd, and he's used one spell slot (Guiding Bolt) of his three first levels. He has not used his free Divine Smite nor his Daunting Roar. His subclass permits him a Channel Divinity to augment his athletic abilities. He is also the only person to have used any Desperate Measures, having activated it to dash and disengage, so he has one marked death save fail. He will regain a Channel Divinity if they take a short rest. The other thing of note: it is unclear if he is attuned to the Bracers of Oak and Birch. If he is, his strength damage doesn't really matter, and he gets a casting of Barkskin. I suspect even if he's not now, he will attune during the level-up.

Julien: At 20/53 HP. He has not used Action Surge yet. He has used both Second Winds, one for Tactical Mind and one to grant himself temp HP with Ride the Threshold. Otherwise, he is a rogue/fighter with no spells. He would regain a Second Wind on a short rest. It's not clear how many times he can use the Hare's Charm per day or if there is a limitation.

[beniial]

[werechicken-deactivated20241121]

The first three are literal genetically enhanced space warriors and the last one is just some twitchy nerd who got lucky

Besides Samus would cream them all

[purplepokili]

your mind

[tlgtw]

Isaac's First Good Day

[sunspotpony]

@earsandtailsarefeet

[tragicwaif]

no but seriously abt the post abt people making characters less traumatized/molested for their lighthearted aus it makes me so saaaaaaaad unironically ….

[tragicwaif]

I was gonna expand on this but I got too sad LOLLL 😭😭😭

[tragicwaif]

And it’s not even always not including it at all but it’s softening it and making it less impactful and less central and less challenging like oh you can be sexually harassed, or groped, or even raped but after a certain point you’re just too fucked up to fit into this cute found family fic about teenagers hanging out at a strip mall or whatever, as if you can’t hang out at a strip mall if you’re too fucked up! Idkkkk

[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

[downtroddendeity]

Dracula is full of details that put it in what was at the time an incredibly modern time frame, which only isn't obvious to readers now because it's been more than a hundred years. A few off the top of my head:

Jonathan brings photographs of the properties to show to Dracula that he took with a Kodak portable camera.

Seward keeps an audio journal via phonograph recording.

Seward being a psychiatrist- the idea that you could actually try to talk to and understand a "lunatic" in order to help them get better instead of just throwing away the key was a depressingly novel concept in medicine at the time. Freud's Studies on Hysteria only came out two years before Dracula, for instance.

Blood transfusions. It's easy to make jokes about how Dracula was written before people knew about blood types and that's why Lucy gets transfusions from so many people with no problem, but because blood types wouldn't be discovered until 3 years after it was published, blood transfusion was still an extremely experimental and risky treatment that many doctors would hesitate to even consider, because sometimes when it was performed the patient would instantly die and no one knew why.

Mina's joke about "the New Woman"- anxieties about gender and feminism in Dracula are the kind of thing whole theses have been written about, but there's an obvious irony to this comment because Mina kind of is the New Woman. In contrast to Lucy, Mina is a highly-educated woman with a real actual job, and she works to hone those practical job skills because she plans to be an active participant in Jonathan's work.

When Van Helsing decks Lucy's room out with garlic flowers, he telegrams to Holland for overnight shipping across the Channel from a friend who owns a greenhouse, because garlic flowers are a good 3 months or so out of season at the time the chapter is set.

Jonathan literally makes a comment in Chapter 3 about the surreal contrasting modernity of sitting at an antique desk in an ancient castle and frantically scribbling steganographic shorthand in his notebook.

[sprinkledsalt]

It drives me insane that you still regularly get articles treating Elon Musk like a serious thinker and someone whose takes on anything at all should be listened to when he, as the richest man in the world, has murdered hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in the world thus far by killing USAID. The richest man in the world starving the poorest children in the world to death is so evil it feels like a bad movie script, but no one cares. It’s not even in the average person’s mind when you bring up his name, in part because the media just shrugged and will only occasionally mention it as like, one line in an article about him as a mere afterthought.

Musk has done other terrible things, too, but god, this one has a high and increasing body count. It should define his legacy. Every article about his wealth should mention how he not only refuses to use any of it to help people, but he actively cut money that wasn’t even his from providing food and medicine to the poor. But nope. No one cares.

[littlebosslady7]

Age of Umbra Sallowlands Character art shared on CR socials (src)

🎨: strange_house on Instagram.

[pnwnativeplants]

[bgm05]

[blondebrainpowered]

Peanuts - March 12, 1959

By Charles Schulz

[noelle-ism]

i stopped giving a shit about "legit" purchases of digital products after i spent $80 on the entire Dark Horse collection of Trigun/Trigun Maximum ebook mangas, learning that I only got access to reading them through a proprietary website ereader function, couldn't download them, and couldn't get a refund, and then literally only a year later, getting an e-mail stating that Dark Horse was shutting down that part of their company and I wouldn't even be able to read them anymore. Fuck that

[noelle-ism]

Pirate shit. Don't feel bad for it. It's not "your fault" that artists, independent or otherwise, can't make a living. You downloading an album or ebook for free isn't the cause of the problem. The cause is capitalism, plain and simple, and pirating is a lucky loophole that companies are still trying to stomp out.

[funnygirlthatbelle]

let space dad go on vacation

[ryebreadgf]

[meltingpotofinterests]

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[the-murmuration-project]

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.